Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Bernays Lives

"You step in the front door of your nearest chain grocery store. What's immediately to your right? At Wal-Mart, Kroger, Whole Foods and countless others, that's the fresh produce section. Some of them have their baked goods over there, too. And at those stores, the doors and registers are positioned to steer you that direction when you walk in.

This is because, after years of analysis of how humans move in a store, they've found that we're as easy to predict as animal migrations. Studies show that Americans like to shop counter-clockwise. Over time, they've found that stores that cater to this by putting the door on the right do better business than stores with the door in the center or, worst of all, the left.

Grocery stores are laid out to lead you around a set path you didn't even know you were following. Knowing you'll head right, they place the freshest, best-looking stuff they've got right in your path. Not the most popular stuff, mind you -- they know most of you didn't run to the store at midnight to buy lettuce, and they know that if they put the Doritos to the right, you'd grab them and head to the counter. Instead, they lead off with the produce, which tends to make the best psychological impression on you. The idea is that you'll associate the rest of the store with the freshness, bright colors and nice smells you got from the nicely laid-out produce.

After they hit you with the brightly colored lemons, apples and oranges, they schedule your predictable counter-clockwise path so that different products show up at the exact time that will make you most likely to buy. The stuff you actually came for -- cola, chips, milk, eggs, sliced cheese, cookies -- doesn't show up until the end, once your cart is chock full of stuff you didn't know you needed when you walked through the automatic doors.

Remember, the goal is to keep you in the store as long as possible, and to make you pass as many shelves as possible. You can't buy the new nacho cheese flavored Hamburger Helper if you don't know it exists.

We know that rotational patterns like this are common in herd animals, like elephants, but nobody is quite sure why humans do it. Studies have shown that British, Australian or Japanese shoppers tend to go the opposite way (clockwise) through the store, so some have speculated that it's based on the side of the road you're most used to driving on. If you drive on the right, you head right and follow the wall around."